Posted on 08/05/2024 2:25:50 AM PDT by karpov
Does anybody in politics understand tax policy these days? The Biden-Harris Democrats want to raise tax rates to Thomas Piketty French socialist levels. Republicans want to cut taxes, but they want to do so for specific groups to buy their votes. They’ve all lost the growth plot.
Mr. Trump’s tax fumbling is especially disappointing because his 2017 cut in tax rates was the policy foundation for the strong pre-pandemic U.S. economy. But so far in this campaign he’s proposing hugely expensive tax cuts for different voting groups that won’t do much for growth.
We’ve written about his promise not to tax tipped income. Then last week he averred on Truth Social that “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!” He needs to win the senior vote against Kamala Harris by a large margin, so he’s going right for their pocket book. We favor lower taxes as a matter of principle, but not all tax cuts have equal benefit. And this one is likely to backfire in spectacular fiscal and economic ways.
Social Security benefits weren’t taxed until 1983 when the Greenspan Commission recommended the idea to shore up the program’s dwindling finances. Congress moved to require beneficiaries with more than $25,000 in income to pay tax on up to 50% of their benefits. Ten years later Congress did it again by taxing an additional 35% of Social Security benefits for seniors with income above $34,000.
Taxing benefits is expected to raise $94 billion this year for the Treasury. But here’s a fiscal twist. Social Security benefits are indexed for inflation each year, but the income thresholds for taxing benefits aren’t. This means that taxing benefits will raise much more revenue over time as inflation boosts Social Security payments and retirement distributions.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“When the Social Security trust fund is scheduled to run out of money in 2035, it doesn’t make sense to effectively raise Social Security benefits.”
We give illegal aliens 5 times what we give SSI recipients.
The anti worker, anti tariff pro income tax Nowalls Scum Urinal can GTH.
SSI was raided by the rat politicians and in its place an IOU
Raising tax rates never increases revenue. It is a fools errand.
The author is juxtaposing a concrete proposal, eliminating one or more categories of taxation, with a nebulous, and ultimately unobtainable, goal of “eliminating corruption.” Ideas that might have been uttered during a McCain or Romney campaign. If Trump were to follow his advice, he would go down in flames like they did.
Meanwhile...
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/04/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
Futures not looking good...
To put it mildly.
Sorry it does make sense.
“When the Social Security trust fund is scheduled to run out of money in 2035, it doesn’t make sense to effectively raise Social Security benefits”
The “Trust Fund” is just an electronic entry that doesn’t really exist, while the national debt is eating the financial underpinnings of the country on a daily basis.
Americans need to come to grips with the fact money taken out of the private sector is bad and is the worst use of those funds. Government is a malignancy which if allowed to grow unchecked (where we are now) will eventually kill the host.
When somebody says “whether his economic policy makes sense,” he is avoiding the issue. When you are trying to argue with somebody on economics, you should get your English correct.
I’m of the opinion that the policy is “trust me bro.” But, maybe I’m wrong. Here is what you can do: point to a statement of a coherent policy. Possibly, this policy is spelled out in the fifteen pages that are left of the Republican Party platform. Possibly, the policy is in a “white page” like statement released by the Trump campaign. There are other possibilities.
The FairTax model works.
Import Tariffs work. Don’t buy, don’t pay.
McCain and any other Republican went down in flames in 2008 because Bush got us into no win wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and then there was the Financial Crisis of 2008. In 2016, Trump devastated Jeb Bush because of he (Jeb) couldn’t express what if anything was wrong with our invasion of Iraq. Today the Republican Party has almost entirely rid itself of the neocons, and that’s a good thin.
As for financial crisis, none of the Democrats and few Republicans know the basics of economics, hence our slide into what might be an unsolvable debt burden and our falling standard of living for middle-class citizens.
Romney, in 2012, didn’t go down in flames. He had a lead in the polls and then lost by a small margin when Obama (a) won the third debate, and (2) came across as Presidential during “Super Storm” Sandy. As it is, Obama pulled off something of a trick in being re-elected by a smaller margin than his original victory. Most Presidents who slip from their original showing, lose.
Biden was definitely running behind his 2020 numbers, and actually, in the still sparse polling data we have at this time, and even with a “honeymoon” glow about her, Harris is running behind Biden’s 2020 numbers.
It looks like this election will be a knock-down, drag-out fight to finish. Trump’s ads have already been “up” in the battleground states, when our side usually waits until Labor Day. Trump pulled an inside straight to win in 2016 while losing the nationwide popular vote. And, he came up short in 2020. Trump supporters shouldn’t be so haughty going into this fall’s election.
It looks as though a few votes in this or that battleground state will decide the outcome.
If the taxed social security in order to reenforce social security then why wasn’t the money raised deposited into the social security fund rather than the general fund?
That’s crap. We paid into SS with taxed money so taxing SS income is double dipping
“and replace them all with ... a value-added tax.”
NO! A VAT will start small and then, just like the income tax, get larger and larger and larger.
Go back to tariffs like the Founders intended.
L
Yup- and he would do well to concentrate his message on bui,ding the wall and deporting people here illegally because they are costing us, after all costs are esti ated (ie direct costs and indirect costs, like a family losing their income earner to murder by an Illegal- time lost, therapy caused by the loss, etc), we are spending over $1 Trillion dollars on illegals now per year, every year.
That would be a tremendous savings every year, but you can bet liberals would gobble up those savings gs and spend it on other thi gs like sending to terrorist nations-
Trump's overall tax policy will eventually be very broad based.
But by far the best government tax policy is to stop spending so much AND stop taxing so much.
Starting with tips... nothing wrong with that.
The inconvenient truth is that since the 50s, no matter the tax rates, income tax revenues have been 15 to 20% of the GDP.
Given that reality, the only way to solve the problem is for Congress to limit spending to 15% of the GDP, and to pass laws that help grow our GDP.
You are talking short-hand.
Trade protectionism: Biden is for “re-shoring.” His Chips Act is protectionist. Biden hasn’t approved any pro-trade initiative. Trump renewed NAFTA (renamed USMCA), got FTAs approved for South Korea and Japan, finagled a trade deal with China involving that country buying a lot of US farm production, and tried (as Obama had tried before him) to negotiate a US-EU trade agreement. When you look at the facts, Trump is much better on trade than Biden.
It’s probably inevitable that any Republican will be better on trade than any Democrat, because our Senators and Congressmen are from the rural parts of the country, and agriculture is and has always been a strong export. Our concern shouldn’t be imports, but the balance of trade and services, as well as the security of trade routes.
(While I’m on the subject of trade, I’d like to point out that Trump sees economics as tied-into geopolitics. During his first administration, he successfully used trade to promote world peace. I think Trump will be able to end the war in Ukraine in large part through economics.)
Lowering taxes and a “pro-working class tax structure” - sounds good, but we’d like to know how spending and taxes add up. That is, the impact on the budget. As a general rule, Republicans have favored flattening the tax structure (widening the base, closing loopholes, etc., and lowering the rates). This approach was reflected in Trump’s tax cuts in his first administration; and, it’s easy to see how his promises thus far during the campaign, e.g., to not tax tips, would fit into a totality.
Energy policy - perhaps you know this, but Trump’s approach involves more than “opening up” domestic energy production and construction of energy infrastructure. It also involves joining the Trillion Tree March. So, instead of getting to net zero by trying to reduce emissions, it is to get to net zero by offsets, primarily growing trees. With the matter of net zero settled by off-sets, we would be free to produce and consume fossil fuel or any source of energy, whether or not the alarmists are correct. Trump’s policy is very strategic.
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